


Momma's Boy

by sylviarachel



Category: You Could Make a Life Series - Taylor Fitzpatrick
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, Men's hockey culture sucks, Pre-Canon, Sad teenage Bryce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22200103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: If he wants to play, this is how it’s gotta be. And he does want to play. He wants it more than anything, always has, ever since he can remember. Wants to make it to the show, and he doesn’t want to brag, but he’s pretty sure he can do it.As long as nobody knows.Or,Bryce Marcus: The Pre-Jared Years
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33





	Momma's Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by ... well, basically the entirety of _Impaired Judgement (And Other Excuses)_ , but especially the early episodes and the one where Bryce explains things to Julius.

Playing in a checking league is an adjustment, for sure. But Bryce is tall for his age, he’s strong, he trains hard. He can hold his own, can learn to throw a check and learn to take one. A lot of the guys on his team are like … not very friendly? There’s something about him that’s different from the other guys, something besides not having a dad, and he’s old enough to know that being different isn’t great. But he’s already used to that. It sucks, but he can handle it. He’s still good at hockey, and that’s what matters.

*

Going to play in Spokane is …

It’s the same, but more. His billet family is nice and all, but he misses his mom even more than he expected he would, and it’s way more of a relief than he’d ever admit when she announces, a few months in, that she’s always wanted to try living in Washington State for a while and she’s found a nice apartment to rent for her and Bryce. He apologizes to his billet parents and puts on a show of rolling his eyes about it in front of the guys, but when they’re alone in the rented apartment he hugs his mom  _ so hard. _ Since he was four years old it’s just been the two of them, and Bryce has never been good at making friends and he seems to be getting worse at it instead of better, like as he gets better at hockey he gets worse at being, like, a person. Or at least, a person other guys want to hang out with.

And he knows why. He doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to give it a name or like, say it out loud, and he  _ super  _ doesn’t want to say it to anyone else, especially after what went down over the summer with Riley and Lapointe. Fuck, that was horrible, and he couldn’t even talk to his mom about it, like he could if he was that scared about anything else.

But he knows. He carefully doesn’t look in the dressing room, in the showers, and he knows. He watches the older guys wheeling chicks, or trying to, and he knows. He studies them, tries to act as much like them as he can,  _ be  _ as much like them as he can, because they’re basically adults, guys look up to them, they’re popular on the team and at school.

The hazing sucks, especially shit like getting locked in the bus washroom naked with half a dozen other rookies until they can get their clothes untangled and get dressed again. But it’s whatever. Bryce can handle it. That’s hockey, right?

If he wants to play, this is how it’s gotta be. And he does want to play. He wants it more than anything, always has, ever since he can remember. Wants to make it to the show, and he doesn’t want to brag, but he’s pretty sure he can do it.

As long as nobody knows.

*

Hockey’s all about  _ team _ , and team means fitting in, being like everyone else, and that’s always been the hardest part, the part Bryce is worst at. But he wants to play, so he’s gonna do it if it kills him. 

He plays hard, he trains hard, works hard at hockey and works even harder at being a guy like the older guys. He wonders, sometimes, if they really hook up with girls as much as they claim when they’re bragging in the room, and if they have as much fun doing it as they act like they do, because it sure isn’t fun for him, and it doesn’t seem like it’s that fun for most of the girls either. But it kind of doesn’t matter, because the guys don’t seem to  _ like _ him any more than they used to, but they do rag him less, which is … well, he’s not gonna say it’s just as good, that would be a big fucking lie, but it’s … less bad than before.

Well, it’s not worse, anyway.

Well, it’s kind of worse, because everything he does with girls is a big fucking lie, and it itches at him, makes him feel like maybe  _ everything _ about him is a lie, makes him afraid they’ll somehow  _ know _ and then they’ll  _ tell everyone _ , but how can he stop doing it without making the guys think something’s up? He’s doing the same shit as everybody else, so that means it’s what you do, right?

* 

He’s less worried about girls realizing what’s up with him after a house party in Prince George where he accidentally overhears two drunk UNBC girls, who apparently both hooked up with the same Cougars d-man but definitely have never hooked up with Bryce, talking about  _ hockey bros who think they’re the shit, _ complaining that Cougar was a shitty lay and how hockey players are not as good in bed as they think they are. Which makes Bryce wonder why they’re at this party, then, but also, it sounds like you can be super into girls but also bad at hooking up with them, so maybe he doesn’t stick out as much as he thought.

He ends up making out with one of those girls in an upstairs bedroom, later, and it’s awkward and he doesn’t really enjoy it and he doesn’t think she gets that much out of it either, but they were both so drunk, it’s hard to know. At least they didn’t get all the way naked or anything, so it was easier than it sometimes is, hiding how not into it he was?

She didn’t give him her number. They almost never do, and it’s still always a relief when they don’t. Bryce doesn’t remember her name. That’s not unusual either.

He knows he probably shouldn’t drink so much? But he feels so shitty all the time, trying to be this person he’s really not, and hating that person and also hating himself, it’s a toss-up which one he hates more on any given day, and none of it feels as bad when he’s a few beers in, none of it hurts as much. It’s easier to be Marker, who picks up, or pretends to—mostly pretends to—on every roadie, and talks about chicks and their tits all the goddamn time, when he’s halfway to wasted. He doesn’t like that guy, but he doesn’t like himself either, so it’s not like being honest would feel any better. That guy is who he’s gotta be, if he wants to make it to the show.

He just wants people to like him. Or if not like him, at least not hate his guts, and he’s trying as hard as he can but it never seems to matter. 

Maybe he needs to try harder. Maybe if he just keeps trying, if he just tries _hard_ _enough,_ it’ll get easier. 

*

He survives the combine, better than survives—he may have puked after the Wingate, but he put up top 10 numbers. The meetings and media don’t go quite so well, but Summers is there to handle things, and Bryce doesn’t like him much, which seems mutual, but does trust him to know what he’s doing, because someone who represents Jake Lourdes  _ and _ David Chapman, that’s not someone who ever takes his eyes off the puck.

The Flames draft him, and they’re not a good team, but that’s hockey—bad teams are where you go when you’re drafted high. Summers gives him and his mom a long, serious lecture about what it means to get drafted high by a struggling team in a big market: the high expectations, the media attention, the pressure, the fan hopes. Bryce tries to pay attention, but he’s jittery and anxious, like he needs a hard workout or maybe a drink. Can’t have either one right now.

He smiles big through the media shit, the meetings with front office, and then he sneaks down to the hotel gym and runs himself into exhaustion so he won’t give in to the temptation of the minibar in front of his mom.

*

He starts with the Flames, gets sent back down to Spokane “for development” before his 10 games are up, and it’s kind of a relief: he knows he can  _ play _ at the NHL level, but everything else … well, if he thought Calgary was going to be a new start, that he might fit in there better than on the Chiefs, that hope didn’t last more than a few weeks. His teammates didn’t like him, no matter how hard he tried to fit in. The coaches liked his goal scoring but didn’t bother to hide that they didn’t like  _ him. _ And Summers was right, the media in Calgary is something else. Spokane’s not  _ better, _ not really, but it’s no worse, and at least he’s like … used to it. 

He calls his mom every day, sometimes more than once a day, but when she offers, worried-sounding, to come back down to Spokane, Bryce fends her off. He misses her like crazy, but he can’t just run home to mommy every time someone’s mean to him: he’s almost 19, he’ll hopefully be an NHL player next year, he’s gotta start growing up for real.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t retreat to Richmond the minute the Chiefs’ season ends.

*

His second year out of the Dub, Bryce sticks in Calgary, ends up on the first line, starts to really click with his lineys on the ice, even though nothing changes off of it. Scores a ton of goals, which feels amazing. Picks up girls in bars when the mean chirping gets too bad, which feels … not amazing. Especially after one of them tells the whole fucking internet that he’s selfish and bad in bed, and half the room acts like it’s their business and also like they somehow saw it coming.

He still calls his mom every day, tries not to hear the way she sounds worried, to deflect her questions about what his teammates are like and whether he’s making friends. Goes out with the guys, not because they especially want him there but because that’s what the team does and he can’t stop trying to fit in, can’t stop hoping one of these times he’ll crack the code and go from trying to be like them to  _ being _ like them. 

And because when you’re out with the guys, nobody’s really paying much attention to exactly how many drinks you’ve had. Not that Bryce is counting, because what the fuck would be the point of that, but he knows he’s drinking more than some of them, though not as much as like, Morris—that dude clearly has a problem. And he stays away from the hard stuff, tries not to notice the guys that don’t.

Bryce doesn’t have a drinking problem. Bryce just … 

*

They lose at home to the Oilers, and he’s had a few drinks, and this Oilers fan—who is, Bryce would like to point out,  _ super fucking wasted _ —gets in their fucking faces, and look, Bryce isn’t proud of it, okay? But the fucker  _ deserved _ to get punched. Anybody would’ve punched him, in Bryce’s place, okay?

The Calgary police do not see it that way, like, at all, but the Oilers hand out free tickets and swag and the fan doesn’t end up pressing charges. Summers and Flames management between them get it figured out, and then proceed to tear Bryce a new one, not for the first time. Make him read out a public apology they wrote for him, because he apparently can’t be trusted to write it himself.

Which they’re maybe justified in, since buddy  _ totally deserved it _ in Bryce’s opinion, and saying that at a press conference probably wouldn’t help calm things down.

They think he’s stupid, just another idiot hockey player with a temper and way more on-ice skill than off-ice brains. And they’re not totally wrong, okay, Bryce can be realistic about his own abilities (he’s really good at hockey, pretty good to look at, really bad at basically everything else, not especially smart, this is his life and he’s used to it), but it chafes at him, the way they make it so clear they don’t fucking trust him at all.

*

He doesn’t really remember, afterwards, what exactly led up to the next thing? He was drinking, obviously. He can’t remember exactly why? But he can make some educated guesses. Can’t remember exactly how much, either, but like … enough to not realize how wasted he was, and obviously enough to get pulled over for driving erratically, and then to get in a shouting argument with the cops who did it. So, probably a lot. Probably more than usual. 

Still, it’s whatever. Guys drink, it’s a normal thing to do.

Summers yells at him, and Burns yells at him, and Lily from PR yells at him, and the whole front office yells at him, and Bryce kind of … mostly tunes them out? He’s stupid, he’s reckless, he’s irresponsible, blah blah blah. Not like he didn’t know that’s how they see him. They tell him he’ll be doing community service, but he doesn’t really pay attention to the details.

What he  _ does _ pay attention to is the phone call where Mom tells him, in a voice that stops him in his tracks, that if he ever,  _ ever _ again gets behind the wheel when he’s been drinking, she will fly out to wherever he is and kill him herself.

She doesn’t have to say,  _ How could you. _ She doesn’t have to say,  _ Have you forgotten what happened to your dad? _ She doesn’t have to say,  _ I can’t believe you would do this to me. _ Bryce may be an idiot, but he can fill in the blanks.

And this isn’t like the Oilers fan, he realizes: Nobody got hurt, but somebody could have, and they’d have been somebody like Bryce’s dad, somebody who was just living their life and didn’t deserve it.

They don’t talk for a week after that. It’s the most serious fight they’ve ever had—though it’s not even a fight, really—the longest he’s ever gone without hearing her voice. She doesn’t call him, and Bryce wants to call her but doesn’t know what he’d say, doesn’t know how he’d deal if she refused to pick up, if she refused to talk to him. Finally Bryce can’t stand it anymore, and he sends a text:  _ im really sorry mom. i know i messed up, i know how bad it was. i promise it wont happen again. i love you _

And to his huge relief, she calls him. They talk, and they both cry, and Mom tells him she loves him more than anything but she meant what she said, and there’s so much Bryce wants to tell her but he can’t, he  _ can’t _ , he got tipsy that one time and told her he doesn’t like girls and that’s like … even that is almost further than he ever thought he could go. But his mom still loves him, and it’s like a weight lifting off his shoulders — not the whole weight, not hardly, but after the past week it feels like more than Bryce deserves.

*

The season ends—sooner than anyone wanted it to, but what can you do—and that mostly-forgotten threat of community service rears its ugly head: Flames front office has sentenced him to four fucking weeks of coaching fucking high schoolers at some stupid fucking camp.

And that’s where everything changes.

Not all at once, and not right away, and Bryce is an idiot so it takes him a long time to even realize what’s happening, and then he’s almost too much of a coward to do anything about it.

But in amongst all the random-ass teenage hockey bros there’s this one guy—he’s snarky and mean, and he’s a good player but he’s gonna hurt himself if he keeps stretching like that, and he’s … fuck, he’s the most beautiful person Bryce has ever seen in his whole life, and Bryce wants to be around him, wants this guy to like him, in a way that’s terrifying and amazing all at the same time. Matheson resists Bryce’s attempts at coaching him, he pokes at the tender places in Bryce’s feelings like he’s studied how best to get under his skin, he steals Bryce’s pizza and insults his car and his dick and his clothes and everything else about him, he straight-up tells Bryce to fuck off, and yet Bryce just … can’t stay away.

He’s astonished at himself when he invites Matheson to go for a ride with him—won’t even really understand until later what he means by the invitation—but that’s nothing compared to how astonished he is when Matheson says yes.


End file.
